The Role of Local Government Decarbonization Pressures in Enhancing Urban Industrial Intelligence: An Analysis of Proactive and Reactive Corporate Environmental Governance

In the context of China’s accelerated “dual transition” towards industrial intelligence and green development, this paper investigates how local government decarbonization pressures affect urban industrial intelligence in China. Using the Low-Carbon City Pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment, a staggered difference-in-differences approach and Causal Forest model reveal the following findings: (1) Local government decarbonization pressures significantly boost urban industrial intelligence. (2) Local government decarbonization pressures foster intelligent development by encouraging the introduction of intelligent policies, which motivate enterprises to adopt proactive strategies. Meanwhile, the pressures compel enterprises to engage in source-based environmental governance, resulting in a passive intelligent response. Together, these approaches enhance urban industrial intelligence. (3) Fiscal pressure negatively moderates the relationship between local government decarbonization pressures and urban industrial intelligence. (4) There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between openness to foreign trade and the Conditional Average Treatment Effect (CATE), while CATE is higher for cities with higher urban labor costs. (5) Finally, urban industrial intelligence effectively channels local government decarbonization pressures into measurable emission reductions. These findings have significant policy relevance for building a low-carbon, intelligent society.